Gun violence: regrets as useless as ‘thoughts and prayers’

It’s a striking building, with expansive windows, some in autumnal colors, balconies and courtyards, and a sense of nature wherever you look.

The construction company that built the $50 million structure calls it a model for the “school of the future” — no doubt because it’s beautiful, but also because it has bullet-resistant windows and doors, an extensive camera system, security checkpoints, buzzers and bioswales that serve double duty — drainage and to keep people far away.

The new Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, opened quietly in 2016, four years after a heavily armed Adam Lanza stormed the school, killing 20 children and six adults.

The community came together to help design the school, but the shooting drove a chasm between its residents, or so a Newtown woman, an old friend of a friend, I recently met told me with an anguished face and a lump in her throat.

I thought of her, of the friends and loved ones of those dead children, of Newtown itself — and Columbine and Aurora and Orlando and Las Vegas and Santa Barbara and too many towns to name — when 17 people were murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine’s Day.

Every school shooting — and there have been many since Columbine entered our lexicon as being synonymous with gun violence — retriggers memories not only for whoever was directly or indirectly affected, but also whole communities. All of us, actually.

When will it end?

I don’t think it will.

America loves its guns. Marin, I was surprised to discover, does, too.

From 2001 to 2015, 46,300 guns were sold in Marin — a county of 261,221 residents — with handguns slightly more favored than hunting rifles, shotguns and assault rifles, according to the state Department of Justice.

It’s a quiet subculture, say those who sell guns in the county. Still, that’s a lot of guns.

While schools across the country are beefing up security, which can be costly, some of Marin’s school districts are struggling just to continue as is. Novato Unified School District just slashed $1.5 million from its budget; Tamalpais Union High School District needs to cut several million.

I am hugely inspired by the passion of the Parkland teens and their relentless use of social media to call out the hypocrisy — or “B.S.,” in the words of student Emma Gonzalez — and demand action from their government, and the support they’ve been getting for “March for Our Lives” rallies on March 24.

But youths, black youths, have been protesting and demanding the same things — change, action — for years now, through Movement for Black Lives; Dream Defenders, founded after the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin; Black Lives Matter and other groups. Except they have gotten a lot less attention and support.

What does that tell us?

We’re having a much-needed conversation, but the conversation is bigger than school shootings and gun control. It’s also about poverty and social justice and racism and police violence and domestic violence and mental health and — let’s be honest — social isolation and bullying in our schools.

Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland shooter, struggled to make friends, was mocked for being a loner. “Someone could have approached a faculty member, a guidance counselor, a teacher and said, ‘This kid gets bullied a lot, someone should do something,’” a student who attended class with Cruz told the Miami Herald. “I regret definitely not saying anything.”

I hear him, but regrets are the same as “thoughts and prayers” — useless.

So, yes, let’s march and fight for change. Let’s call B.S. But let’s also do whatever we can in our own homes, schools and communities to make them safer — and more inclusive — and to address the underlying issues that lead to gun violence.

It’s on us, too.

Vicki Larson’s So It Goes runs every other week. Contact her at vlarson@marinij.com and follow her on Twitter at OMG Chronicles

About the Author

Vicki Larson is an author and has been an award-winning lifestyles editor, writer and columnist at the IJ since 2004. She has worked as an editor in Santa Rosa, Petaluma, Walnut Creek, San Francisco, Napa and Miami. Reach the author at vlarson@marinij.com
or follow Vicki on Twitter: @omgchronicles.